BSG Face of the Enemy Webisode Revelations (SPOILERS!)

Cafe Society
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As of now, I hold that the SciFi Channel has broadcast exactly two and only two programs worth watching: Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the new Battlestar Galactica. That’s it. Just two.

I haven’t seen any science fiction film or television show anywhere near as well-done, thoughtful, relevant, and emotionally powerful as the re-imagined BSG. Time magazine critic James Poniewozik agrees, and pretty much for the very same reasons I so highly admire it.

The show continues it’s final episodes Friday night, and I’m wondering what people think of the last set of BSG online webisodes titled The Face of the Enemy. I was truly stunned by the awful revelations from whichever number 8 was on board (Sharon? Boomer? I can’t keep 'em straight).

There was also a major revelation about Felix, the discussion of which is the main reason I started this thread (so spoiler boxes don’t make sense). The Face of the Enemy reveals that Felix has a gay relationship (with a new character as far as I know).

It had always bothered me that such a dramatically powerful and gritty show lacked any gay characters and never even mentioned homosexuality at all. So I welcome the fact that the producers and writers finally grew the huevos to bring in at least a bisexual character, and especially that they chose Felix, who in my view is a particularly noble and admirable character in the series (not to mention that Alessandro Juliani is plenty easy on the eyes!)

But damn it, did they really have to make him bisexual instead of gay? It’s as if they only grew one egg! Cowards! That kind of half-respecting meekness should have abandoned long ago. About the only explanation that I might even consider accepting for this is if they only recently decided to portray a character as having a non-traditional sexuality, based, perhaps, on the Prop 8 debacle.

Opinions?

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Wasn’t the commander of the Pegasus also gay? Admiral Cain. Gaeta’s not the first on the show.

Louis Hoshi was the com officer on the Pegasus and then on Galactica. He’s been in a number of episodes, but not in a major role. He did take over Gaeta’s job on Galactica when Gaeta went on the Demetrius mission with Starbuck, so that’s a previous connection between them.

I actually don’t think Gaeta is all that noble or admirable. Wasn’t that the point of the webisodes, after all? He wanted to believe he did the right thing, playing both sides of the political fence during the occupation of New Caprica, but the webisodes proved that he was deluding himself, with dire consequences for everyone who trusted him.

Think about it: he was seduced by an Eight who was part of the brutal occupying force on New Caprica. He gave her a list of all his friends in detention, almost all of whom she had killed, except for a token few. Somehow, all this time, Gaeta never noticed that damn near everyone on the list was dead. This parallels the way he watched the Eight murder all the crew members on the shuttle during the webisodes, but still managed to remain in denial about it, and act all surprised and horrified when she said, “Duh, I killed them so we could survive, just like I did on New Caprica. How can you pretend you don’t know?!?”. I don’t find that particularly admirable, though it might be an example of how a normally honest man breaks down in the face of immense pressure.

He made a devil’s bargain with the Eight, something Baltar pointed out to him when Gaeta visited him in jail, and got knifed in the neck for his trouble. Baltar’s comment, something like, “I know what your Eight did,” indicates that it was both known and knowable what the Eight did to the people on Gaeta’s list, so Gaeta wanted to silence Baltar. However, despite this, Gaeta is still all happy to see the Eight on the shuttle. WTF??? You have to wonder if there isn’t something seriously wrong with Gaeta’s psyche. Is it partitioned in order to hold two contradictory viewpoints at once?

Not to mention the fact that he lost half his leg because he was shot while committing mutiny against Starbuck on the Demetrius. Of course, Starbuck turned out to be right and Gaeta wrong. It’s too bad he’s the only person who suffered any real consequences for that attempted betrayal, since the rest of them were just as guilty, but I think it shows an overall pattern with Gaeta. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. He tries to do the right thing by playing both sides, but it often does not work out to a good end. The results are that he winds up taking a cowardly, compromised course of action, then denies responsibility for consequences of his choices.

What this says about his bisexuality, I don’t know. Nothing good, it seems. He definitely has a dual nature, split in half, with the half the holds the guilt sometimes shut off from his conscious mind, as it was on the webisodes. Now he’s also shown as bisexual. Is this foreshadowing the fact that he’s a Cylon? There’s the quintessential dual nature, with half of his selfhood hidden in the shadows of his consciousness.

As I reread the above, I think his “wanting to have his cake and eat it too” would be a rather unfortunate way to describe bisexuality…

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Yeah, I don’t think Ron Moore ever gave too much thought to acknowledging gays in his vision of the Galactica universe, but I and a few million other people kept whining about it. Gaeta was always one of the top picks, gaydar-wise.

Although, I always thought Apollo was kinda flaming.

It will be interesting to see if Gaeta & Hoshi’s relationship makes it into the regular series. Even if it doesn’t, I’m glad Moore snuck it in.

Does it have to do with prop 8? I dunno. I’m pretty sure it has to do with lots of complaining.

Admiral Cain was indeed the first gay character, but she was kinda evil. I feel a little better about Gaeta & Hoshi.

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I recall no mention or indication that Cain was gay. What’s the consensus here?

Thanks for the correction; I hadn’t recalled him.

No, that’s not how I saw it at all. It took a great deal of courage to spy behind enemy lines! Just because he was being unknowingly used by that enemy doesn’t make his herosim any less noble and admirable. Read some first-class spy fiction, for example John Le Carre’s (specifically, the General in Smiley’s People), and you’ll see that that kind of thing is perhaps the most noble and courageous thing anyone can do during a war.

Gaeta never “played both sides of the political fence”, he spied on the Cylons for the underground and produced all or almost all of the Intelligence the resistance needed to fight the Cylons on New Caprica. I view Felix’s actions to be just as heroic as the best of the French Resistance during WW II.

The major point of the webispodes, in my view, was – very much along the lines of Le Carre’s Smiley stories – to emphasize how dark, cloudy and nebulous the world of intelligence is and how dangerous it can be to trust anyone at all in that world (a real-world example being Curveball).

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Cain was gay: the Six she had chained up in the brig of the Pegasus was her former lover, as revealed in Razor.

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In my previous post, I neglected to praise Rubystreak’s post and ideas as I had been planning before prematurely hitting “Submit”. Although I don’t agree with the main strokes of his/her analysis, there’s some very sharp thinking in there. Good on’ ya, Ruby.

I wish I had more time to respond before Friday night, but I gotta go…

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Unknowingly? I disagree, and I think that was the point of the webisode. How did he not know? Bad enough he was sleeping with the enemy and trusting her with that lists of names, which she was using as a hit list. They all die, yet he claims to be unaware of this. But Baltar knew, so Gaeta should have known too. The Eight then went on to do the same thing, writ smaller, on the shuttle right in front of him. He still claimed not to realize what she was doing, even though there’s no way he could have missed it. That’s an incredible level of denial, to the point of being indicative of a serious psychological problem.

The point I took from that was that Gaeta is capable of massive acts of denial, even when the evidence is right in front of him, that he’s trusting the wrong person. It’s not a double-cross if you are literally or figuratively WATCHING them kill your friends before your very eyes. Then the question becomes, why are you just sitting there watching? And why are you claiming you didn’t know? It’s as if he can’t admit that yes, he is deeply self-interested. He splits off the part of him that knows atrocities are being committed around him and through him, so that he can maintain his self-image as a hero, a good guy. But he’s not, because he’s actively or passively enabling the atrocities to happen.

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Here’s one: your rant about him only being bisexual is ridiculous. Unless it contradicts something in his earlier portrayal that I’m unaware of, I can’t see how making him bisexual is any less a valid decision than making him 100% gay.

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I agree with several things there Ruby, but I don’t think you’re being fair to Gaeta here.

They don’t all die, and the webisode made a point of this. Felix says something to the effect of “No, no I saw so-and-so, and their kid…and this guy too.” 8-with-issues says that she let a few go to make it look good. Should he have known anyway? Probably yes, but he had “proof” that his dealings with her were working, which I’m sure is the reason he let his denial go on for longer. Keep in mind that he was probably very isolated too. He’s Baltar’s aide, so everyone’s going to keep away from him because they assume he’s a traitor. He can tell himself that the dead are just hiding from him in particular. And probably some resistance fighters were.

I don’t take 8-with-issues saying Felix should’ve known as gospel, because she’s a hugely unreliable narrator. I do take Baltar knowing more seriously, but he’s not the most reliable narrator either.

And I don’t take the mutiny on the Demetrius as playing both sides at all. Kara (who he hates with good reason) was acting batshit for two months, and Helo (one of his best friends, who he trusts) led the mutiny. He didn’t instigate, in fact he picked a side and stuck with it. And got really screwed for it, but Felix isn’t writing the scripts. He doesn’t know that Kara’s team was written to be right.

This I agree with. (First Baltar, then 8-with-issues. Someone had to have set him up with Hoshi, because he’s far too good a choice for Gaeta to have made on his own.:wink: )

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I think that the upshot is not that Felix is weak and deluded or that he was truly deceived - it’s that he doesn’t know which is true, and neither do we. (I agree the most damning thing is Baltar, but he’s been known to talk out of both sides of his mouth and make lucky guesses too.) The revelation is not that he in fact knew Evil8 was doing what she was doing in either case, but that he *might *have known, which in a way is a much more interesting question. And it’s clear from the interaction with Tigh that the experience has pushed him far, far, from the line he was dancing by trusting an erstwhile enemy.

As for his sexual orientation, I didn’t necessarily think he was portrayed as bisexual. Evil8 explicitly says, “I’m a woman, and a Cylon. I didn’t seduce you - you were seduced by hope.” The implication being she thinks that he is generally attracted to men (and human ones, at that), and it was a weird, emotionally charged situation where he got involved with her solely because of their working together to spy and save people (as he interpreted it at the time). It highlights just how much he may have turned off his brain and his gut instincts in his dealings with her in the camp.

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You could tell when he was saying that he was bullshitting himself. “I know I saw him, I know it!!!” If Baltar knew what was really going on, Gaeta could have known, and he stayed in denial because he was comfortable with things as they were, as creepy as that sounds. I don’t think the families of the people on the hit list would think I was being unfair… nor would pretty much anyone else on Galactica or in the government. That’s why he stabbed Baltar in the neck, after all, to keep his secret.

I find Gaeta rather pathetic. I understand why he is the way he is, but he has shown that his psyche will do anything to protect him from knowledge he doesn’t want. His inability to face the facts cost people their lives.

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For me, the real point that was brought out was more about the Cylon ‘war tactic’ than anything.

Yes, Gaeta was used, the secret that he was trying to keep Baltar from letting out was that he was sleeping with an 8 - Hell, Cmdr. Tigh just killed his wife for “sleeping with the enemy”.

Gaeta’s guilt over the realization of what the cylon’s did with his list(s) is what prove’s he didn’t realize it at the time - he wanted to believe in Hope.

And 8’s response about how to deal with the enemy “kill the ones that are important” - so, she kept givign Gaeta hope, a few seeds of assurance, and he kept giving her lists of the “important” ones.

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So is Athena (Hera’s mom) dead now. Was that the 8 that fried from the ‘faulty insulation on the pliers’ type electrocution? I have the hardest time keeping the different 8s and 6s straight.

Also, was that the Boomer 8 that killed them all?

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I think these were two random red-shirt 8s that have absolutely nothing in common with the other 8s other than being an 8.

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Athena stayed on the Galactica, so couldn’t have been Gaeta’s 8. The Boomer on the Raptor was I think, a random 8 with Galactica Boomer’s memories, the one who shot Adama, but not Helo’s 8 who spent time with him on Caprica.

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I don’t recall either of the 8’s on the raptor being specifically named.

Supposedly, all of the 8 models had access to all of the other 8’s memories.

I think we are supposed to infer that the last 8 was the same 8 that Gaeta was with on New Caprica.

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It’s the 8 that was in the pilot jumpsuit that has me confused. I assumed that was Athena. Other than boomer early in the series, I don’t remember any other 8’s wearing BSG crew garb.

I don’t think either of them was Boomer. Isn’t boomer with the non-truce clyons with Brother Cavil?

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I tend to remember that ‘Boomer’ is with Brother Cavill…

When the Cylon pilots joined the Galactica pilots for the Resurection ship mission, they were in ‘similar’ flight suits, I dont recall any specific adornments on this particular 8 to designate her one or othe other.

And that’s why I assume she’s a “Random Red Shirt #8 - Pilot Version” - if they had wanted us to know it was “Specific #8 Model” it would’ve been more clear.

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Then why did Baltar say, “I know what your Eight did”? I thought the webisodes were set up as a deliberate parallel with what happened on New Caprica. That is, the Eight is killing everyone right in front of Gaeta (literally on the shuttle, figuratively on New Caprica) and he is ignoring it because he wants to believe. He’s being selfish, allowing his need to believe things are the way he wants them to be to overwhelm his sense and reason.

He wanted to believe, but deep down, he knew better. His failure to act, his complacency in what he wanted to believe, makes him complicit.

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(bolding mine) - All I recall was him saying that he knew what Gaeta had been doing as well - I don’t recall the statement being that explicit.

The second part of your quote, I don’t disagree with.